


Jam Session

by Perosha



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, Humor, Pre-Kingdom Hearts I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 08:20:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9429650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perosha/pseuds/Perosha
Summary: [Pre-KH1] After joining Organization XIII, Demyx tries to start a band with some of his new coworkers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Who writes 2007-era Organization badfic in 2017? Hint: it's me. I do.

Like most important events that had happened throughout his life, dying had been an accident. There he was, minding his own business, smoking a joint and strumming tunes for spare change in the park, when all of a sudden a bunch of _things_ had appeared out of nowhere and started gobbling up picnickers left, right, and center. He wasn’t quite sure what had happened, and the last thing he remembered was playing tug-of-war over his sitar with a yellow-eyed monster, screaming and smacking it in the head. But one way or another he’d died, and within a week he found himself sitting on an uncomfortable throne in a fitted black coat, listening to his new boss drone on about hearts.

Dying had not, in principle, bothered him. In fact Demyx (as he was now called) discovered there were plenty of advantages to being a Nobody. Rent and food were covered, and his favorite sitar had turned into a magical weapon he could summon out of thin air. The only apparent downside was an emptiness between his ribs that he couldn’t quite describe, but soon even that didn’t bother him much.

No, the only real problem was that being in the Organization was _boring._

Sure, there was work to do every day, but that was hardly a selling point, was it? In life he’d worked very hard to avoid working, after all. And the ‘work’ the Organization undertook was repetitive and dreary: reconnoitering different worlds, slaying the Heartless, and occasionally popping into the Round Room to listen to the boss’s musings. It was all dull enough to drive a guy crazy, and to make matters worse, no one else seemed as bothered as he was. As far as Demyx could tell, in fact, none of the senior members ever did anything interesting in their spare time at all.

For his part, Demyx practiced his sitar at every opportunity, not least because it was the only connection to his former life he still had. But mostly he did it because it was fun. Not as fun as it had been, perhaps, but listening to familiar chords reverberate around his bedroom filled up that hole that dying had put inside him, like pouring water back into a container that had been tipped over and spilled.

And really, he thought, why should he give up on his dreams of stardom just because he’d died? After all, tons of musicians skyrocketed in popularity after they died, and unlike him, they didn’t even have the luxury of being able to write new material!

The solution was obvious. Barely a week had gone by before Demyx started putting out feelers in the Grey Area, quizzing people before they left on their daily missions.

“Hey, Zex.” He peered over Zexion’s shoulder, who sat reading on one of the couches. “Do you play any instruments?”

“My name is not ‘Zex.’ And no, I don’t.”

“Really? Bummer.” Demyx looked over at Lexaeus, standing in the middle of the room contemplating...whatever it was the huge, silent man contemplated all of the time. “Hey, big guy! You play any instruments?”

Lexaeus looked over at him.

“Uh. That a no?”

Silence.

“Uhhh…”

“That’s a no,” Zexion translated, turning the page. “Why are you even asking?”

“I wanna put a band together. Y’know, have some guys to jam with in the evening. It’d be fun.”

Zexion’s only comment was a raised eyebrow.

Demyx continued investigating the musical potential of the Organization, though to little avail. The old geezer didn’t play anything, nor did the redhead, and when he asked Saïx about it, Saïx just glared at him as if he were an idiot. He hadn’t asked Xigbar yet (the guy was impossible to track down most of the time), and he hadn’t asked Xaldin either, though he was pretty sure he didn’t need to, as Xaldin had already threatened to get stabby over the “infernal racket” of Demyx’s late-night sitar playing.

Soon there was only one person left to scout.

“You had a question for me?”

Xemnas looked down at him from his high seat in the Round Room. Everyone else had already left the meeting.

“Yeah, boss.” Demyx had to crane his neck and lean back in his seat to look up at Xemnas’s face far above. “I was wondering—do you play any instruments? Or...sing? Y’know, like, uh...like karaoke, or anything?”

Xemnas paused.

“I do not.”

“Aw. That’s a shame.” Demyx sighed. “Man, and here I was betting you sang, at least. You’ve got a killer voice!”

The flattery went nowhere. Xemnas only stared at him, and Demyx sweated under his gaze, suddenly regretting his own boldness.

“Was that really what you wanted to know?” Xemnas asked.

“Yeah, that’s all. I, uh, I don’t...Thanks anyway, boss!”

Xemnas’s brow furrowed as Demyx vanished from his seat in a rush of darkness.

This setback daunted Demyx for only a few days. He kept practicing every chance he got, and in the meanwhile scribbled down songs, both the popular hits that he’d learned as well as those of his own pieces that he could remember perfectly. When he decided he had a large enough library, he began assigning Dusks and Dancers secret reconnaissance missions of his own invention, and slowly his bedroom and a closet down the hall began to fill with equipment.

The lesser Nobodies weren’t quite bright enough to know what to steal most of the time, so the stash grew unevenly, and if he wanted something specific he had to give them a picture to take with them for reference. Still, they were just competent enough to be getting on with. The haul of loot soon contained nearly everything imaginable: amps and mics and cases and stands, all kinds of tangled wires and cords, drums and keyboards and guitars, woodwinds and strings and brass and even a grand piano with a few ivory keys missing here and there. Demyx tuned the least-battered items to his satisfaction, then embarked on the final, most important phase of the plan.

The poster didn’t look very professional, he had to admit, but it was large enough to be read easily all the way across the Grey Area. He took the precaution of having a Dancer tape up the poster for him instead of being seen doing it himself, and it greeted everyone with bright, bold bubble letters when they shuffled in to receive their missions the next morning.

BAND TRYOUTS! NEWBIES WELCOME!!  
ALL INSTRUMENTS PROVIDED  
TONIGHT — HALL OF EMPTY MELODIES

“Our newest member’s even more daft than I realized,” Xaldin growled, inspecting the poster. Demyx pretended not to hear this as he ducked into a dark portal, handwritten orders from Saïx stuffed into his coat pocket.

That evening, after his mission (which he skimped out on even more than usual), Demyx spent an hour setting up equipment. The longer he labored, the more lesser Nobodies showed up, until a good dozen of them had convened and were helping him set up a makeshift stage on one end of the hall, untangling cords and ferrying instruments, making sure magic-infused electrical equipment was working properly despite not being plugged into anything. Demyx alternated between tuning his sitar and supervising. It was clear some of the lessers had at least partial memories of what these objects were for, as they twanged on strings and tapped on drums here and there, like wriggly children.

More curious Dusks and Dancers trickled in, but not any of Demyx’s seniors in the Organization. He had nearly despaired of any of them putting in an appearance when the sound of a dark portal opening right behind him nearly made him trip over an extension cord.

“Whoa, hey there, Zexion! How ya doin’?”

Zexion’s half-hidden gaze swept over the pile of instruments and makeshift stage. He tucked his lexicon tighter under his arm as a Dusk slithered past, dragging a cable.

“I’m only stopping by to satisfy my curiosity,” he said. “I had thought that _surely_ that advertisement was a joke. But, here you are.”

“Did you come to try out for the band?” Demyx asked hopefully.

“No. As a matter of fact, I’m amazed you think any of us would have time for something like this, with all the work the Organization has on its plate.”

“Aw, come on, man, the workday’s over.” Demyx spoke in a rush, eager not to lose his first potential recruit with opposable thumbs. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, right? Give it a shot!”

Zexion scowled, dismissing his lexicon.

“No. I think not.”

“You won’t even take a crack at it?” Demyx tried not to sound desperate, and failed. “Hey, you said you’ve never played before, right? Well, who knows, maybe you’re a natural! Like, uh—you could be superstar material and not even know it!”

This did not tempt Zexion, who frowned harder, his one visible eye narrowing as he watched Dusks skitter to and fro among the equipment.

“If you ever put even a fraction of this enthusiasm into your missions…” Zexion began, but was cut off by footsteps from behind him.

“This is really happening, huh? Thought that sign this morning was a prank.”

“And what are you doing here?” Zexion asked the newcomer. Axel shrugged.

“Hey, I only came to see what all the fuss was about.” He scratched at his mane of red hair, taking in the scene. “You’re actually serious about this band thing, huh, Demyx?”

“Sure I am!” Why was everybody around here so dense? Didn’t any of them have hobbies back when they were people? “You wanna try out for a spot? Zexion said he just came to watch.”

“So did I,” said Axel. “Though I guess there’s nothing to see, if it’s just you. Too bad. Was kinda hoping for a show.”

“We can put on a show if you guys just jump in,” Demyx insisted. “Come on, you came all the way here. Why not jam out for like—ten minutes?”

Axel snorted, wandering over to the drum kit set up at the back of the stage, behind several amps and mics and a Dancer that was perched on the seat behind an electronic keyboard, pressing buttons. Axel studied the drumkit with the forced aloofness of hidden interest, and soon he was poking and prodding, testing the timbre of the different drums. Zexion hung back, watching Dusks and Dancers flit around with pieces of equipment, though they at least kept the ‘stage’ area clean. He did not seem interested in the proceedings so much as baffled by the audacity of it all.

Axel eyed the lesser Nobodies around him that were fiddling clumsily with other instruments.

“You’re gonna try and make musicians outta these guys, Demyx?” he asked. “They aren’t exactly the brightest bunch.”

“I know, but—hey, they were people once, right? So that means some of them used to play. And you don’t forget all that just because you lost your heart. I mean, I didn’t.”

The Dancer at the keyboard pecked out a C-scale. Axel snorted.

“Well, whaddya know.” He rubbed his chin, then reached out and tapped at the hi-hat with one finger, making it ring. The tinny sound echoed in the cavernous hall.

“This is certainly...novel,” Zexion admitted, watching the proceedings. “But still a waste of time. What do you expect to accomplish with all of this?”

Demyx wasn’t listening, instead rummaging through a cardboard box for some of his handwritten sheet music. He reappeared just in time to see Axel sit down at the drums.

“Man, I haven’t seen any of this stuff since I was a kid.” Axel gave the bass drum a tap with the toe of his boot, producing a low note, like a burp. “Talk about flashbacks. Hang on, where are the pedals...there we go...”

He played another bass note, using the foot pedal this time. The _thump_ rang out much more satisfyingly.

“I thought you said you didn’t play anything?” Demyx asked him.

“Yeah, well…” Axel picked up the drumsticks, twirling one. “I meant I’ve never had, y’know, lessons.”

He tapped out a clumsy but competent rhythm, testing his muscle memory. Demyx grinned.

“That’s great, Axel! You’ve still got it!”

“Hey, don’t get the wrong idea. I never had much of it in the first place.”

“Aw, come on, don’t knock yourself.” Demyx’s grin widened as Axel messed around with the drums. “You know, I should have guessed you could play. You’ve totally got that wild drummer spirit!”

“Whatever you say, new guy.”

But Axel still looked rather pleased with himself as he tapped out a beat on first the snare and then a few of the other drums, reacquainting himself with the movements, and the speed with which he improved betrayed many happy hours spent banging away as a kid. He even did a few tricks with the drumsticks, or tried to—both times his elbow knocked the stick flying and a lesser Nobody had to retrieve it. Demyx began retuning his sitar in light of this new development.

Axel, a drummer—of all the luck! With a drummer he was halfway there. He could cover the bass lines himself in a pinch, and together those two were the beginnings of a band! Sure, it wasn’t _much_ of a band, but it was twice as much as he’d started with when he’d woken up this morning. Progress!

“What about you, Zexion?” Demyx asked. The enigmatic scholar had not yet fled the scene. “We got a drummer, so what do you want to play? Everything else is open.”

“I’m afraid you’ve mistaken my bewilderment for intrigue,” Zexion told him. “I have plenty of work to take care of this evening. I’ll be on my way now.”

“Don’t sweat it, Zexion.” Axel made a stab at doing a smooth snare roll, almost succeeding. “You couldn’t do this stuff even if you wanted to. Might as well quit while you’re ahead, right?”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Zexion asked testily. Axel shrugged.

“Nothing. Just saying, you can’t learn _this_ by reading a book. Hi- _yah!”_

He tossed the drumstick in the air, catching it with a flourish before banging out a quick, flashy rhythm, making Zexion scowl as he finished off by hitting a cymbal.

“It can’t possibly be that difficult,” Zexion said. “I can read music, you know. I taught myself on principle.”

“Yeah, well, that’s just step one. Step two—”

“You can read music?” Demyx blurted, amazed. His luck was turning around so fast it was almost dizzying. “Like—for real? Hey, can you read this?”

He shoved a stack of handwritten sheet music under Zexion’s nose. Zexion nearly went cross-eyed trying to look at it.

“I believe so, yes.”

“Then you can be on keys!” Demyx dragged Zexion over to the keyboard by his coat sleeve. “Come on, it’s perfect! Keyboard’s easy!”

“And what,” Zexion asked, extracting himself from Demyx’s grip, “would be my motivation for participating?”

“It’d be fun!” This clearly not having resonated, he added, “And, if you stay, you can, uh—oh! You can name the band!”

“Why would you imagine I’d care about that?”

“Well, you’re...er, all smart and stuff! Right? So you’d definitely think up a good name. Pick something cool for us, all right?”

“Okay, seriously?” Axel pointed to Zexion with a drumstick. _“He_ gets to name the band? He can’t even play.”

“This isn’t a band,” Zexion reminded him, even as a Dancer guided him over to the keyboard and helpfully set up his music. “The whole notion is absurd. But, I suppose...if I had to choose a name of some sort…”

Axel consoled himself with warmup exercises, filling the hall with bangs and bongs. His quip about Zexion not being capable of learning music seem to have irked Zexion, as instead of leaving, Zexion allowed himself to be instructed by the Dancer on which keys matched which notes, working his way up to scales in a surprisingly short time. Demyx hummed to himself as he fiddled with the settings on an amp that he hadn’t yet figured out how to plug in to his magical weaponized sitar.

Keyboard _and_ drums? Finally, something interesting was going to happen around this place!

He held out hope for more arrivals for as long as he could, but eventually it became clear that no more volunteers were forthcoming, and he resigned himself to a three-man act as Axel and Zexion practiced their respective instruments, Axel loudly and erratically, Zexion with much more hesitant precision. Demyx busied himself choosing a couple of pieces for them to try out and making handwritten copies of the sheet music, for once doing his best not to be sloppy with it.

Truth be told, he’d never been the leader of a band before, at least not one of his own making. He’d always either played solo or subbed in on other gigs. But this—this was his first real opportunity to build a team from the ground up. A Nobody band! What a headline that would be!

By the time he finished copying out the music, Zexion had progressed to chords. Demyx’s spirits rose even higher.

“Let’s do the first four lines of this,” he said, passing out the new music, “just to try and gel. I’ll cover the bass for now, but usually I’m on lead.”

“Go figure,” Axel said, taking off his gloves and stuffing them in his coat pocket. He made a show of rolling up his sleeves halfway to the elbow, though how that might help his drumming wasn’t obvious. “I guess I’m just supposed to improv which drums to use, huh?”

“Yeah, just keep the beat however you want. I’ll tell you if it sounds way off.” He thought a moment, then added, “But be sure you do some bass comping, all right? I don’t usually cover bass.”

“Roger that.”

Axel licked his thumb and flipped through the several pages of sheet music he’d been given, accidentally scattering some pages across the floor. A Dusk retrieved them for him, and Axel sent it off in search of a metronome.

“You ready over there, Zex?” Demyx called. “We’ll go slow for you, no worries.”

“If you call me that again, I’m leaving,” said Zexion, without looking up from the keyboard. “And what are we playing, exactly?”

The nearby Dancer-turned-coach set Demyx’s hastily-written sheet music onto the stand, pointing out the relevant section. Demyx hoisted his sitar.

“First four lines. Everybody ready?”

“One sec.” Axel’s tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth as he adjusted the metronome a Dusk had brought him. When it was clicking steadily, he gave it back to the Dusk. “Hold on to that for me, would ya? Good job.”

“You all set over there, Zexion?” asked Demyx.

Zexion did not deign to say anything, but the Dancer beside him gave a wave that was clearly meant to evoke a thumbs-up. Demyx hoisted up his sitar.

“Alright, guys—from the top!”

They started playing.

It was slow, painful going—even slower and more painful than Demyx had imagined it would be. But miraculously, neither of his impromptu bandmates abandoned him after their first run-through, nor the next or the next. Zexion’s only motivation for staying seemed to be proving a point to Axel about his competence, and Axel, in turn, only seemed to want to make loud noises and scratch a forgotten itch from his childhood. Demyx didn’t care. They’d turned up and were practicing. In a pickup group, that was about all you could ask for.

Their fifth time playing through it, it almost sounded like music. Almost. It was at least musical enough to give the Dusks excuse to clap politely at the end, and Demyx bowed gleefully before turning to address his co-stars, moving a microphone stand out of the way.

“Nice going, you guys!” he lied. In these early stages, the most important thing was to be encouraging. “We’ll pull it together in no time. Sure wish we had another guy on strings, though...these bass lines sound totally weird on sitar.”

“Saïx took cello lessons growing up,” Axel volunteered, arms folded behind his neck. “Not exactly the right kind of strings, but...”

“I highly doubt Saïx could be convinced to take part in any of this,” added Zexion.

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

They realized they’d accidentally agreed with one another, and shared a mutual look of distrust. Fearing one of them might decide to leave, Demyx coughed loudly, turning both of their attention to him.

“So, uh—you got a band name for us yet, Zexion?” he asked. “How about it? Who’re we gonna be?”

 _“We_ are going to be nothing. But, hypothetically, if you made me choose a designation...” He paused for dramatic effect. “ _Cor Inanem_. It means ‘empty heart’ in Latin.”

“Is this a metal band?” asked Axel, sticking a drumstick behind his ear like a pencil. His enormous hair kept it in place. “Because that sounds like a metal band. How about something more—I dunno, rock n’ roll?”

“No, no, it’s great!” Demyx insisted. (Actually he didn’t like it at all, but hey—whatever you had to do to keep one-third of the band happy.) “Cor Inanem. Yeah, totally rad. I dig it!”

He blasted a power chord on his sitar, sealing the deal. Behind him, Axel rifled through some of the new sheet music the Dusks had foisted on him.

“You got any songs that don’t suck?” Axel asked, flipping pages. “Seriously, all these drum parts are a snooze.”

“Hey, I’m trying to keep it simple. This is our first practice session, right?”

“First and last,” Zexion pointed out.

“Aw, don’t say that!” Demyx ran a hand over the top of his spiked mullet. “I know it’s rough, but we’ve only played a couple tunes. First day with a new group’s always rocky. But as long as we power through it, we’ll get better and better!”

“You’re taking this delusion rather far,” Zexion said. Axel scoffed.

“Well, look who’s talking, huh? No one’s chained you to that keyboard.”

Zexion ignored him, playing an unsteady but accurate arpeggio instead. The Dancer at his side patted him encouragingly.

“From the top?” Demyx tried. No one bothered to argue.

They played on. Well, maybe “playing” gave it too much credit, but there were definitely music notes involved, even if they fell over one another and clashed violently most of the time. Over and over Demyx had to rein Axel in, forcing him to slow down to accommodate the pace of the actual tune, since he unsurprisingly had a tendency to do his own thing. Demyx expected Zexion to require constant supervision as well, but actually he managed to steer himself through it fairly well. It seemed Zexion’s own pride was enough to keep him focused and intent on success, despite (or perhaps because of) the unusual nature of the task at hand.

They took a proper break after twenty minutes.

“Good work, you guys!” Demyx said, undaunted by the fact that it was the most painfully incompetent jam session he had ever been a part of. “I’m definitely hearing some improvement. Don’t worry about going fast, though, okay? We wanna sound good. Just take it easy and focus on playing _together.”_

He produced a pencil stub from his coat pocket, scribbling directorial notes on the back of his own sheet music.

“Axel, just stay on beat and keep steady. You don’t have to do anything fancy yet. Zex, don’t worry about those last couple of bars, we’ll skip over that until you can get the hang of it on your own. Listen to what I’m playing if you get lost.”

“Don’t call me—” Zexion began, but was interrupted by the sound of someone clapping with slow, sarcastic cheer.

“Bravo!” came a laughing voice from the rafters.

Everyone looked up. Xigbar sat on a support beam with his legs dangling, his sharp grin visible even at a distance. He laughed louder and leaped down, landing easily on his feet, like a cat.

“Man oh man, what a performance! Makes me wish I was missing an ear instead of an eye.”

Axel and Zexion scowled in unison, but Demyx was too buoyed by the glory of a real practice session to be intimidated.

“You wanna jump in and play, Xigbar?” he asked at once. “We could seriously use a bass player.”

“Who, me? As if.”

Xigbar laughed again, but his mirth was short-lived, as a Dancer fetched one of the instruments from ‘offstage’ and passed it to Demyx. Xigbar wheezed when an electric bass was shoved against his chest with careless enthusiasm.

“C’mon, I bet you’d love it! Bass is pretty easy once you get a hang of the fingering. You ever played guitar? It’s a lot like that. Here, I’ll show you. Hold the neck with one hand up here...”

“Whoa, whoa there, kid, dial it back. I’m not here to sign up for your little after-school club.”

Even as Xigbar said this, a pair of Dusks fastened the guitar’s strap around his shoulder.

“But you’d be perfect for it!” Demyx insisted. (A dedicated bassist would, after all, free him up to play the all-important lead role.) “I mean, you’ve got rock star style already. That hair, that eyepatch...You just need to add the music, and bam! Instant awesome.”

“Joke’s on you, bucko. I’m already awesome.”

“That’s news to me,” Axel said, and hit a _ba-dum-tiss_ on the drums. Zexion snorted.

“I’m serious!” Demyx said. “I could totally see you as a front man. Can’t you guys?” He looked over his shoulder at the other two. “You can picture it, right? Xiggy here dressed up like a rock star?”

“What, you mean like—leather pants?” asked Axel. Zexion winced.

Xigbar laughed, but this time his amusement sounded genuine instead of malicious.

“You’re a real piece of work, Demyx, I’ll give you that,” he said. “Can’t even pretend this is the dumbest thing that’s ever happened around here, either.”

He adjusted his grip on the bass and pulled one of the strings too hard, producing a discordant noise instead of a note. Still, he chuckled and ran a hand over the curves of the body, looking intrigued.

“Y’know, I always did think these things looked pretty cool...”

“That’s the spirit!” Demyx clapped him on the back, startling him. “You’ll get the hang of it in no time. We all just gotta work together. Right, team?”

Axel saluted with a drumstick, then banged out a quick sequence that somehow sounded like a sarcastic retort. Xigbar regarded Demyx skeptically as the latter fussed over his sitar’s tuning pegs, bringing it back to its normal tonal range.

“What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?” Xigbar asked him. “Thought you were just Mr. Take-It-Easy?”

“Apparently,” said Zexion dryly, “his poor work ethic only extends to actual _work.”_

Demyx listened to none of this, now busy rifling through sheet music with a Dancer’s help, trying to find the bass parts of the songs they’d already practiced. Failing to do so, he switched gears and pulled out a blank piece of paper instead, dividing it into columns.

“Guys, before we go further, let’s figure out a practice schedule.” He gnawed on the end of his pencil stub, holding the blank paper out far in front of him, as if he were an actor reading his lines. “Does this time work for everybody? How many days can you make it every week?”

“Hang on, how often are we talking here?” Axel asked. “I’m not down for this if it’s gonna cut into my free time. I’ve already got hobbies, y’know.”

“As if,” Xigbar laughed. “Like what, Flamesilocks?”

“Napping.” Axel counted off on his fingers. “Sleeping. Snoozing. Power napping...”

“Setting a practice schedule is overly ambitious,” Zexion said.

“Come on, you guys, we can’t quit before we even start! And we’ve gotta practice together if we wanna get better! It’s not rocket surgery.” Demyx waved the schedule paper like a signal flag. “Look, just stick with me. We’ll get better in no time flat. And if we pull it together, maybe we could even start thinking about—”

 _“What,”_ came a steely voice from the balcony above, “is going on down there?”

Everyone froze in place: Xigbar clutching the bass like a piece of contraband he’d just paid cash for, Axel with his drumsticks hovering in midair, Zexion rearranging his sheet music at the keyboard, and Demyx standing in the middle of everything, exuding an air of completely uncharacteristic leadership and competence.

“Hey there, Saïx!” Demyx gulped, but forced a construction-paper smile, looking up at the balcony. “We’re, uh, having band practice! I put up...um, I put up a sign about it earlier…I dunno if you saw...”

Saïx disappeared into a dark portal, reappearing before them in a whorl of inky black so quickly that Demyx jumped back, squeaking.

“This cannot possibly be what I think it is,” said Saïx.

Demyx gulped again.

“Welp, that’s my cue,” said Xigbar, and vanished into thin air. The bass he’d been holding fell to the floor, making a horrible crash that echoed in the hall, so loud that the three remaining band members flinched hard.

Saïx kicked the neck of the fallen bass aside. It spun away and hit an amp.

“Explain yourselves.” He paused. “On second thought, don’t. I just want this mess cleaned up at once.”

“We’ll put everything away once we’re done,” Demyx said. “I swear.”

A Dancer prodded the bass guitar, checking it for damage.

“You’re _done_ as of this moment,” Saïx sneered. “Where did all of this garbage come from?”

“Oh, you know, um.” Demyx scratched his cheek with one finger. “Around?”

Saïx glared at him so hard that he stepped aside. This gave Saïx a dead-on view of Axel at the drums, and the two stared at each other, Saïx’s eyes narrowing and Axel answering only with an embarrassed shrug. Saïx’s attention moved to Zexion, and though Zexion kept a perfectly straight face, Saïx’s lip curled.

“I would have thought I could expect better from _you,_ at least,” he said to Zexion. Axel looked offended.

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

Saïx ignored him, instead turning in place to take in the full scope of the stage setup. His eyes narrowed.

“All of you,” he said, “clean up this mess, at once. No one is leaving the hall until all of this is gone.”

“You’re a real ray of sunshine, you know that?” Axel grumbled, and disappeared in a swirl of darkness right out of his seat, leaving the drums unoccupied. Demyx looked to Zexion for support, but Zexion had already silently vanished, doubtless having illusioned himself out of the situation.

Saïx glowered at Demyx, the only visible target remaining.

“I hope you had no other plans for the evening,” said Saïx, “because you’ll be piling up every single piece of this junk.”

“But...but we were just getting started!” Demyx groaned. “We had a cool band name and everything!”

Saïx barked orders at the lesser Nobodies, who busied themselves with disassembling the nearest piece of equipment, unplugging and unscrewing and neatly winding up cords. The sudden flurry of activity at waist-height all around was discouraging, and Demyx deflated as pieces of the stage setup began to pass by in the grasp of Dusks, like debris floating down a river.

“Put all of this away,” Saïx told him before leaving. “I want no evidence that this ridiculous event ever happened.”

Demyx was left alone in the ruins of his shattered ambitions. He allowed himself a single sad twang on his sitar. A passing Dusk handed him a still-ticking metronome.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

“You didn’t have to do that,” Axel told Saïx, gesturing. “C’mon, seriously, who was it hurting? You could’ve at least let us finish the hour out.”

“Don’t waste my time with nonsense.”

“What’s so bad about a little fun, huh?”

 _“Fun_ isn’t something we’re capable of having. You of all people should know that, Axel.”

“You could still stand to lighten up a little. Sheesh.”

Saïx did not dignify this accusation with a response, brushing past Axel and disappearing into a corridor of darkness. Axel watched him go, then sighed, scratching the back of his head and turning away to go further up the hall. Before he set off, however, he unzipped his coat just far enough to reach inside and pull out a pair of drumsticks.

He hummed to himself as he started walking, tapping away at the air.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

“I know what you’re thinking,” Zexion said tersely, striding up the corridor. “And I wasn’t actually _interested_ , to be clear. It was a matter of principle. Axel questioned my competence, so I was obligated to disprove him.”

He glanced up at Lexaeus beside him, but Lexaeus said nothing, only looking sober and imposing, as usual.

“You were watching, I assume?” Zexion asked.

Lexaeus said nothing.

“Well, put it out of your mind, then. I can assure you it was nothing more than a passing whim, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

Lexaeus said nothing.

“I’m quite serious, Lexaeus. Don’t bring it up.”

He pulled ahead as they continued up the corridor, his stride brisk, holding his head high. Behind him, Lexaeus smiled with his eyes.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Cor Inanem’s less than an hour of existence instigated an Organization-wide prohibition on “frivolous activities,” on paper defined as “anything that distracts our members from our collective work efforts,” and in reality meaning more or less “anything the powers that be find sufficiently annoying.” Apparently performance art fell decidedly into this category, and Saïx came to Demyx’s room the next day to make the severity of the ban clear.

“Banned?” Demyx repeated, crestfallen. “Like, permanently banned-banned?”

“Yes. On pain of demotion.”

Saïx made a note on his clipboard, his golden eyes blazing with barely-contained annoyance.

“Playing music as a group is a total waste of time and manpower. Lord Xemnas brought this Organization together to accomplish an objective, not squander our collective energy on ridiculous leisure pursuits.”

“Not even after work? I mean, if we’re already done with missions for the day…”

“What part of ‘forbidden’ is confusing to you?”

Saïx made another note on his clipboard.

“But I can still practice on my own, right?” Demyx asked. “I mean, my sitar’s my weapon, sooo I won’t be able to do my missions if I can’t practice it…”

“I am aware of that.” Saïx did not sound pleased by this loophole. “Still, you shouldn’t rope anyone else into your...practice. The last thing we need is anyone else in this Organization becoming as indolent as _you.”_

Demyx did not take offense at the perfectly true accusation, and when Saïx left he summoned his sitar and strummed it absently, exactly as he’d always done. Disappointing as the verdict was, it wasn’t the end of the world. It would have been awesome to jam with an actual band again, but if that couldn’t happen, he’d just have to keep flying solo.

But man...what a wasted opportunity! He kept strumming as he contemplated it. The name hadn’t been great, but the gimmick...A Nobody band! The first Nobody band in all the worlds, ever! Forget playing all over the globe, which had been the extent of his ambitions as a human...a Nobody band could perform all over the _universe!_ Touring the worlds, a gig on a different planet every night—not to mention the amazing water show he could put on now, too! And Axel could have had, like—flaming drumsticks! And...

But reality forced him to reel in his imagination. The Organization couldn’t have nice things, could it? Everything had to be _work_ and _Heartless_ and _blah blah blah._ Honestly, didn’t any of these guys remember what fun was? It was like they hadn’t ever been human at all.

Maybe that was inevitable, Demyx realized. All these other guys had been Nobodies for years and years, so maybe once you’d stuck around that long, you fossilized and got all boring, turning into Saïx or the boss. He shuddered at the horror of it.

No, he wouldn’t let that happen to him, even without a heart. He’d never stop playing, no matter what Saïx said about it. After all, getting eaten by a Heartless hadn’t stopped him from making music. Some jerk with a clipboard wasn’t going to, either.

He sang a tune quietly to himself as he played his sitar, already hearing in his mind the beginnings of a new hit single.

The door opening again nearly an hour later made him look up, but instead of Saïx, it was only a pair of Dusks. Demyx relaxed.

“Sorry, guys, I’m not going to the hall tonight,” he told them, setting his weapon aside. “Old X-Face put the ixnay on band practice.”

The Dusks looked at each other, and Demyx realized they were each hiding something behind their backs. When one produced a ukulele and the other a harmonica, he laughed aloud.

“Hey there, nice saves! You two wanna jam out with me, is that it?”

They wriggled in unison. Demyx beamed and heaved the heavy sitar back into his lap.

“Awesome! But we gotta keep it on the down-low, alright? Don’t wanna get caught by the fun police.”

One of the Dusks plucked a string on its ukulele. Demyx matched the note on his sitar, laughing.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

“This is all the evidence, sir,” Saïx was saying, as Xemnas inspected the giant pile of musical contraband. “I wasn’t sure if my report was...believable. I thought you should see it for yourself.”

“You did well,” Xemnas said, with his usual unhurried solemnity. “Our Organization must remain intently focused on its goals.”

“Do you want me to assign the perpetrators extra missions?”

“No. Let us hope this incident was sufficient to wisen them without further punishment.”

Saïx took his nod as permission to depart, leaving Xemnas alone to contemplate the chest-high mess of confiscated electronics, instruments, equipment, and wires. He stared at it, then paced slowly, examining the evidence with a growing frown. The starlight from the high windows winked off the erratic jumble of metal and plastic.

After a minute’s ponderous deliberation, Xemnas selected a karaoke machine.


End file.
